Just Can't Wait to Get on the Road Again...

All of my photos can still be found at www.flickr.com/photos/jamierushell

You don’t realize what a following your blog has until you don’t write for nearly a year and everyone wants to know what’s happened to you. So just for the record yes, I’m still alive; yes, I’m still travelling; and yes, the blog is back!

To backtrack a bit, I was living in Manchester, England until May of this year and I absolutely loved it. I think Manchester is one of those cities that grow on you over time – I liked it better when I left than when I arrived, and I was genuinely sad to leave. The holiday season was a lot of fun there, as well. I decided to teach my English housemates about Thanksgiving, but when I sent Dave out for a turkey he came back with… a chicken and a duck! Apparently turkeys are hard to come by in the months before Christmas, so we decided to have a multicultural Thanksgiving. Between that, the shockingly bad candied yams (dubbed the marshmallow pie) and the fire in the oven, I think my English Thanksgiving was a huge success! I got to go home for Christmas and see my family for the first time in six months – it was great! And I’m happy for my family to visit me whenever they want (that’s a direct hint, guys). We had a New Year’s party with a lot of friends from work who are mostly foreign, and thus got to celebrate the New Year in two time zones. We watched the Spanish celebrations on TV at 11, when I learned that their tradition is to eat 12 grapes at the 12 strikes of the clock. I’m still not sure why they do it, but it was funny watching them all trying to stuff their mouths full.

And even though I didn’t get to travel around the UK as much as I would have liked, I did take a couple of side trips. I spent a weekend hunting for Bankys in his hometown of Bristol with my friend Ben. If you’re into that kind of thing, Bristol is a great city for street art. And I also spent St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin with my Brazilian friend Clarissa. I’ve been to Dublin about five times now (and was quite proud of myself for getting around without a map), but this was like nothing I’ve ever seen before! Clarissa took me to a pub where strangers bring their instruments and jam, Irish style, and we saw impromptu parties in the streets with bagpipes and drums. And in the parade were none other than the Shorecrest Scots, my high school band!

Just as the weather started getting nice in England it was time to move on, and I flew down under to Melbourne, Australia just in time for another winter. Shared flats are a bit hard to come by in Melbourne for travellers, but there’s an abundance of travellers’ houses, with anywhere from about five to 25 people living in them. Privacy is not easy to find in Melbourne, but isn’t that part of the adventure? That’s what I told myself anyway… My first three months were spent sharing a house with about 12 other people in an area called Caulfield – it’s a good area, but nothing happens there. It’s boring. So I spent my last month and a half living in St. Kilda, which is arguably the coolest suburb of Melbourne. We had a hard time getting a count of the people at the Ghost House, but our estimate is about 22. We call it the Ghost House because it’s haunted by a man who was killed there when the house was a brothel – sometime between now and the doctors surgery it was 100 years ago. Obviously, the house has a pretty cool history and lots of good stories to go with it. When I wasn’t being haunted, I was working at two steakhouses in the city: The Rare Steakhouse and Squires Loft City. Definitely check them out if you’re in town – it’s the best steak in Melbourne.

I have fallen in love with Melbourne, and I’ll definitely be back, but after nearly a year of working when I’m meant to be travelling and two winters in a row, I was starting to get stir crazy, depresses, irritable, and lots of other things I don’t care to be. And so it was time to hit the road again.

I’ve found myself in Sydney couchsurfing at an amazing house on the harbour (the ferry to town picks me up from the backyard) with a great host named Alex, and I get to see my good friend Christina who I travelled with for three weeks last year, and who came to Manchester for New Years. I’m loving being a tourist again and I’m loving the weather up north – I almost have a tan again! Now that I’m moving again my adventures will be a bit more varied and I’m sure I’ll be more inclined to write regularly again… hopefully…